Regulations for Online Stores (Draft National e-Commerce Policy)

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Comparing Apples to Oranges isn't fair.

Small retailers are essential for the stable functioning of our economy. And none of them have never and will never be anywhere close to violating Competition Act through monopolistic & restrictive trade practices. Coming to RIL, As per our experience, Reliance Retail doesn't sell products at unrealistic prices below cost or arm twist, back stab small retailers/manufacturers. Products are purchased upfront, Payments are on time and the entire business is pretty straightforward. If Reliance starts acting like Amazon/Flipkart in future (highly unlikely) we will take on them as well.

I agree with govt shouldn't be operating businesses. But I have never seen a case where govt owned enterprise has monopoly after 1991. Private people are giving BSNL, SBI a run for money. LIC is a different case but here also private guys are catching up very well.

Coming to Google, they are known to favour in-house products and friendly brands in search results. It deserves to be interfered by Competition Commission.
 
I agree with Sai - Rich companies are becoming very rich just because they can afford to lose billions at the beginning. Sinking small retailers with it.

I had already mentioned 1 year back about my friend's business.

He is now considering shutting down the business because he is simply not able to match the price of online store. (even after reducing his profit from 20% to mere 5%). And put his money in fixed deposit instead.
 
they are asking companies to stop selling self branded products. how is that fair? if i buy a product sold by Grofers from grofers, i get it much cheaper than a comparable brand. because they are selling it at low profit margin and have fewer middleman taking their share. this comparable brand is a big multinational so no small business is getting hurt. just take the example of deos. a branded deo would cost around 150-200 rupees. grofers is selling their own brand of deos at around 80 rupees. the new regulations would stop them from doing this. a deo i imagine is a high profit margin item. there is no way a 200 rupee deo costs (manufacturing) 2.5 times the cost of a 80 rupee deo. customer is basically paying for a higher profit margin and money spent on doing tv and print ads.

there are so many small startups that are selling high quality stuff at quite a premium. and people buy them. they sell through both Amazon (for visibility) and through their own store. sure amazon could target them as well and make it hard for them to sell through amazon. but we are not living in an era that you need to do tv ads to get customers. just run small targeted campaigns on a few social networks and you would develop a good customer base at low cost. bombay shaving company is a good example.

this policy is totally anti-consumer and is designed to help people who are not ready to adapt to the changing times. amazon or flipkart does not have a monopoly in india. online shopping remains a minute percentage of overall retail sales in india.

i mean just look at your current online store. you have a very highly specialized product. no one can just replicate it. you are selling it directly to customer. and you have option to have a small presence on amazon/flipkart for visibility.

this might be a bad analogy but for my line of work... these regulations are like... government implementing a ban on ad-blockers to help lakhs of bloggers in the country recover the loss of revenue from the ad-blockers. i mean just imagine how much tax money government is losing because of ad blockers today.
 
amish said:
Rich companies are becoming very rich just because they can afford to lose billions at the beginning.
Click to expand...
from what i see... these new regulations do not stop this from happening. offline retail stores would continue to crush small brands. if online stores cannot sell self branded products or offer discounts... this policy should also apply to offline retail stores like reliance.

the policy seems like a big win for giants who are facing massive competition from self branded products being sold by flipkart, Amazon, Grofers, bigbasket and others. i imagine big bazaar type stores also have self branded products sold at low prices compared to bigger brands... how is that justified!
 
Consumer is eventually a citizen. If I cant sell my product inspite of being a citizen and foreign company takes away my customer then its anti-citizen.

Additionally I wont buy things either (because I wont have money to survive)

And its not about adapting to changing times... those companies have money power as well as man power. They have amazing softwares. Some have own shipping company.

Plus government has added so many compliance filings. Small retailer just can not keep up with it. Whereas those companies dont have to sweat here either.

A small retailer does not have those resources. Only a businessman can understand the real picture of whats going on and how helpless they are.

Everything is interconnected and complicated.
 
i want to highlight another example here. reliance store in my local market opens at around 6am. people arrive at that time to get their hands on freshly delivered vegetables and fruits. reliance i believe purchase directly from farmers or/and have their own farm land for production. they are able to sell these items at low cost because there are no middlemen involved. how are local sabzi sellers going to compete with them? is it ok to force reliance to stop direct purchasing from farmers or having their own production because small retailers are unable to compete with them?

online based services have disrupted practically every single industry out there. this is how it is. it is just idiotic to have stupid regulations to stop growth. sure, have guidelines that apply to everyone. specifically targeting industries where your favorite donors (ambani and adani) are not involved in is just insane. when was the last time government took out regulations that targeted industries dominated by reliance? based on what i hear from a cousin... they have a monopoly in the polymer industry and they abuse their position regularly. adani is expanding their presence throughout the country. just look at the recent news focused on increasing power bills in mumbai.

you need to have uniform policies. you cannot specifically target international businesses to help your domestic partners and pretend to provide a level playing field. no policy is going to save small businesses if reliance is planning to enter their industry. Amazon and flipkart have local presence with indian citizens working for them. earning big packages. paying same taxes (direct and indirect). they deserve to be treated with the same level of respect domestic companies get.
 
we are basically moving towards the china model. everything would have government regulation.

China restarts video game approvals after months-long freeze | Reuters

streaming services are self censoring. communication platforms are being asked to break their end to end encryption. isps are indicating that soon we would have a policy on how vpns can be used by internet users in the country and so on.

meanwhile... farmers are dying. government keeps bailing out public banks and enterprises.
 
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